Nvidia increases performance in DIRT2 up to 89%

Nvidia has recently launched the latest version of its Geforce graphics driver, now in 196.21 with WHQL certification, which among other things brings SLI support to Dirt 2. You can check out this list and see just what games Nvidia aimed to improve. Today we’ll talk only about Dirt 2, which is currently one of the most popular games and not to mention one of rare games that feature DirectX 11 support. Of course, you can play this game in DirectX 9 mode as well, so the fact that you might not own DX11 compliant hardware won’t stop you from enjoying the game.

Since Dirt 2 is the one of AMD’s main “vehicles” of DirectX 11, Nvidia somehow overlooked appropriate driver support for SLI within this game. Thankfully, the green team remedied that with version 196.21, and the following tables show how this move improved the scores of dual-GPU Geforce GTX 295.

Even a simple glance at the results will reveal massive improvement. Thanks to the new driver, the GTX 295 managed to score almost 100fps at 1920x1200, which is staggering 82% more than we got the last time we played Dirt 2 with GTX 295.

The following table shows that performance is equally good with and without antialiasing – 79% improvement.

Naturally, higher resolutions are this card’s trade so here we see up to 89% better results. We must admit that playing on a large 30’’ monitor at 2560x1600 with 4xMSAA and getting a framerate of 70fps is no small feat. Furthermore, we barely even noticed that this card features no DirectX 11 support because speed pinned our eyes on the track and the next curve. Talk about the way it’s meant to be played - this is probably as close to the phrase as it gets.